Paid sick leave emerging as next front in low-wage workers’ fight

Associated Press

Published
2:46 pm PDT, Tuesday, May 19, 2015

NEW YORK —

Paid sick leave is the next frontier in the fight for the country’s lowest earners. Some of the same workers’ rights groups that grabbed headlines recently by pushing companies for wage hikes are steering the conversation toward paid sick leave. The debate has caught the attention of governments and companies alike.

President Barack is calling for federal legislation that would require companies to guarantee workers paid sick days. And since San Francisco started requiring that in 2007, nearly 20 cities and three states — Connecticut, Massachusetts and California — have passed similar measures. New York, Maryland and other states are considering laws too. And McDonald’s Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which have announced wage hikes recently, are making changes to their paid sick leave policies.

“Paid sick days are a job issue,” said Ellen Bravo, executive director for Family Values @ Work, a network of coalitions fighting to pass paid sick days and family leave policies. “When you don’t have sick pay, you get docked.”

The new focus comes amid wide disparities between the benefits received by the top and bottom rungs of the corporate ladder. Sixty-one percent of U.S. workers get at least one paid sick day, according to a national compensation survey of employee benefits conducted last year by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

But only 20 percent of workers whose wages are at the bottom 10 percent get paid sick leave, compared with 87 percent in the top 10 percent.

“These mandates have a chilling effect on employers’ ability to innovate and be creative with their leave options,” said Lisa Horn, director of congressional affairs at Society for Human Resource Management, a human resource management trade group.